I keep thinking that whoever programs oldies stations is not old enough to select the music. Motown gets beaten to death, and the middle Beatles.
But some people with large followings in the 50s, 60s, and 70s are not considered.
Because once you get off the playlist you can’t get back on again, it’s a law I guess.
I owned all of Elvis’s stuff, but only one or two get airtime. Same with early Beatles, and most of the Sergeant Pepper album.
I also had a collection of Ricky Nelson, Pat Boone.
I had dozens of the lost category “instrumentals”, Al Hirt and Herb Alpert
And I had Bill Cosby’s singing albums. Well, I guess they never hit the radio, but they got a lot of play at parties.
It’s the same deal with “Classic Rock”, you hear the same 50 songs over and over. There was a huge pool of music in the 60’s and 70’s, play some different stuff sometimes!
Clear Channel is pretty much to blame for this policy. In the case of oldies and classic rock stations, the rule is to never have more than two or three songs from a particular artist in regular airplay rotation. There might be some exceptions for artists like the Beatles or Elvis who had a larger number of hits but even in those cases, it still represents only a small sample of their recordings.
Demographics also come into play. Songs from rock’s first wave (approximately 1955 to 1964) are played less and less often because the people who came of age during that time are now at or near Social Security age and thereby not attractive to the advertisers who see them a shrinking audience for their goods and services.
This is where the Internet is so wonderful. Thanks to iTunes and peer-to-peer file sharing, anytime I think of a song I used to like but don’t hear any more…I go out and get it and put it on the playlist. I’ve basicaly built my own oldies radio station.
You never, ever hear Havana Moon. Which is a real shame, because Chuck Berry was a freaking genius. Sometimes, you get Maybeline. Mostly, all you’ll get is Johnny B. Goode.
A lot of it has to do with availability. Some stuff has been out of print for decades. I was happy to see the early Jan and Dean stuff now available, other than their greatest hits. Bygone groups like The Highwaymen and Jimmy Rodgers. And one hit wonders such Norma Tanegra. And songs recorded by groups on other record labels which get lost in the shuffle.
I know I’m going to get beaten for this, but the limited playlists on radio stations didn’t come around because of evil corporate overlords but because of the audiences.
Audiences switched stations when they heard something unfamiliar or that they didn’t like. But the same audiences would listen to their favorite songs over and over. You’d have to be a complete idiot if you ran a radio station and kept playing the stuff that made people leave.
Yes, yes, I know. You are different. You’d like to hear all these unfamiliar songs. You’d never display this behavior.
You never go to Olive Garden, either, which is why they went out of business years ago.
Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond is commonly played in the Boston area but that may be because it is an unofficial song for the Boston Red Sox for some reason I don’t understand. You will sometimes hear Cracklin Rosie. I hear Chicago sometimes as well. The radio station I listen to most often (Boston 93.7) has no true format and no DJ’s. It just plays random songs out of a huge library of music. It could be anything including some country. I think it is a great idea and works pretty well.
Even back in the late 70s our local rock station did not play anything prior to 1964 - that stuff was already too old then. I think this was common across the country.
I just discovered this song by the Supremes (though I think it was released when they were the Primettes) called “Pretty Baby,” with lead vocals by Mary Wilson, which I’d never heard before. I can only listen to it on youtube.com. “Let Me Go the Right Way” is another Supremes one I only hear on youtube.
I love “Silhouettes” but I never heard it on any oldies stations growing up. (Which apparently isn’t a matter of the oldies stations not playing it but me not hearing it or not remembering it.)
The Ronettes song “Be My Baby” seems to get a lot of play but I only knew that they had a version of “I Wonder” (originally by the Crystals) when I bought a best of album.
The Spinners had a several great songs that I never hear outside my iPod. Could It Be I’m Falling in Love
Games People Play
Rubber Band Man
Lots of good Steely Dan that never gets played. Barrytown
Black Cow
Bodhisattva
and those are just the Bs
This thread is making me kinda sad, because there is way more great stuff that isn’t being played than is.
I feel lucky in that I have an informal job as the dj at many of my company events, and I have total control of the musical selection. It really is amazing how happy and grateful people are to hear something that they have some emotional connection to, but haven’t heard for many years.
Yeah, but by being national they are unfamiliar with the local markets back then, which were more powerful than they are now. Songs that got no airplay nationally but were massive in Chicago are ignored, even in Chicago. Songs that got airplay in the market Clearchannel uses as its reference can earn a, “I never heard THAT before!” in Chicago.
